BANG OUT

I.
There is magic and then there are walls
windows, a door. These contain the magic
of human struggle. There are books
in my library which are a struggle to finish.
My library is too connected to my living.
The shades are drawn and books closed.
I am waiting to discover wood, light,
someone else’s cool breath on my neck
in this home, these walls, windows. I will
open the door. I will see The Faerie Queene
and remember the outside of poetry.
Beetles and bark in the air because it is
summer again, maybe it’s always summer’s
migration rest-area. There is magic
in the way light and heat combine
and produce this feeling of environment.
A hot helicopter’s metal shell floats by too.
The sounds become the neighbors, they are
closer to me than the neighbors who say
only hello in passing. The neighbors who only
walk their dogs and complain about my wilted
plants at all hours of the day. A quiet community
is not a community at all. Interlocution is
inside the house, we have dialogue here.
It is magic and it is drunk. I am magic for it.
I am taking a break from watching CNN
from reports of withdrawal if January’s reconstruction isn’t
only there. I hear its circular whir outside too.
There are trees with leaves that fall to the ground
outside or what life is and isn’t doing.
Like how I wish I were speaking with you now
about transformation in the personal narrative
or listening to Discreet Music in a sustainable home.
I have a prayer too in the form of song.
These small incantations like a needle, thread
run through a bar of wax and into a signature.
They hold together everything we cherish.

II.
About ownership and time’s foreclosure
trying to raise your voice but only the echo
from a flimsy magician’s top hat dove.
I hear the seducer of treasure without an ace
to play and think, maybe now it will end.
Now we can say.
To begin civil twilight, while heaven
might eat our propositions
should we begin to distribute bread.
San Ysidro’s door won’t remain closed forever
and people are people, so why should it be.
Inside the tower—not a broken tower—
two options seem: the future’s pull
and then dust.
Who will pledge the shelves and wood
the army of books with feathers.
It is almost morning again, its salient digits
announce a new decline.
We are magic when we wake.
Like only the breeze matters, the projections
of light only gold and warm.

Copyright © 2008, James Meetze.